The present invention relates to a machine for sorting rod-shaped items or articles made of a magnetic or magnetizable material into a given number of length-dependent categories or classifications, preferably items of cutlery such as knives, forks and spoons of mutually different lengths.
Attempts have been made in the art to construct for this purpose machines which incorporate a conveyor path on which the articles are advanced to an apertured plate in which the apertures increase in length stepwise in the direction of travel of the articles, these increases in aperture length corresponding to the particular classifications or categories into which the articles are to be sorted. Thus, the shortest articles fall through the first classifying aperture in the plate and the longest articles through the last aperture, whereas the articles of intermediate length fall through apertures located between the first and the last aperture, in dependence on length. Despite the simplicity of such classifying machines, however, they have been found unreliable in practice and do not have a satisfactory throughput capacity.
Consequently there has long been a need for quick-working, reliable sorting or classifying machines, particularly for sorting cutlery washed in a dish-washing machine, such sorting procedures being carried out manually despite the drawbacks associated therewith with regard to hygiene and working environmental problems.
The objective of the present invention is to provide a machine which satisfies this need. This objective is achieved with a machine constructed in accordance with the invention and having characteristic features set forth in the following claims.